Today flew by!
Mitzi and I walked to the clubhouse this morning. We've signed up for a personal trainer, with the "buddy" discount. We each have to do an individual assessment ($50). Could've gotten that as part of the "buddy" discount, but didn't notice until after we'd already paid, and didn't want to go through the hassle of refunding the transaction and buying it again.
We each paid for 8 sessions, so at twice a week that should give us two months worth of individualized attention and hopefully enough motivation and insight to get on with it by ourselves afterward.
I asked my doctor if I was a candidate for Ozempic and she said no. Guess I gotta do it the old-fashioned way. But I'm going to try Noom.
Anyway, we plan to start after Thanksgiving. We're going up to New York to spend a couple of weeks in the Finger Lakes and spend Thanksgiving with my mom.
I need to strengthen my core so I can drag all my shit to the curb someday.
The trip was nice. If I could, I'd leave at 0200 every time. No traffic! Only thing you have to worry about are drunks and wild animals. The highway out of Blue Ridge was mostly empty, I think three cars passed us. Speed limit was 65 most of the time, but I had the RAV4 in cruise control at 60, figuring I could use a few extra milliseconds if a deer jumped in front of the car. If it weren't for the absence of what would otherwise have been some nice scenery, it was as pleasant as a drive can be these days!
Atlanta at night is pretty stunning too, though I had to keep my attention on the road. There was a pretty substantial amount of traffic on the road.
The RAV4 performed well. At night, it seems to notice the lane lines better and it pretty much steered itself. It does get confused at construction zones. We didn't encounter much construction, but areas where there would be construction once the sun came up, with all the orange barrels with reflectors, seemed to confuse the system a bit.
And in the two places where we did encounter construction, the lighting is confusing and distracting. You've got the barrels reflecting your headlights, police vehicles with blue lights flashing, the construction equipment with flashing lights, and the work lights illuminating the work area.
I felt as though it was almost blinding. I'm developing cataracts, so there are more internal reflections within the lenses of my eyes, so the lights tend to "bloom." I mostly tried to focus on the line at the left side of the lane to limit the amount of light I was admitting in my field of view. And forget about lane-keeping by the car. It would notice if I was drifting left (the car tends to go where your eyes go), and vibrate the wheel, so that was helpful.
But very few tractor-trailers, or any commercial traffic, so visibility was otherwise very good. I-75 is a better road than I-95. I was able to stay in cruise most of the time, with radar-assisted station-keeping. We weren't in a hurry, traffic was relatively light and moving at a fairly consistent pace. By the time we got to I-10 we were almost home and the worst nuisance was the rising sun! I'd left my sunglasses somewhere in the back seat where Mitzi couldn't find them from the front passenger's seat.
The wedding was lovely. The venue was remarkable, I think it's pretty much the thing they do the most. The bride and groom departed in a helicopter. I thought that was a bit over the top, but I guess the theme of their marriage is going to be "adventure." The helipad was a floating device that is kept submerged in a pond at the venue. At the appointed moment, it is raised by flotation using pneumatic pumps and the helicopter lands on it. It is then winched to the "dock" where there's a covered feature to send off the happy couple. It even has a little "spray" feature around the perimeter of the helipad that adds a little visual flair and additional "mist" when it lifts off.
The helicopter is a Robinson R44 helicopter. I didn't mention "mast bumping," or the safety record of that particular aircraft to the groom's parents. Apparently, the venue has been doing this for eight years and hasn't lost a couple yet!
The day after the wedding we headed up to Blue Ridge for some family stuff with Mitzi's siblings. Her mom passed away in January and there were some personal items to sort out and so on. We all went on a boat ride on the lake for a couple of hours, and you couldn't have asked for nicer weather.
Mitzi's brothers-in-law are both conservative Republicans, one is full-on MAGA, the other a little less so. We made an effort to avoid politics, although the less "extreme" of the two felt as though he had to share that he couldn't bring himself to vote for either presidential candidate.
I don't know if that's true, or if it's in any way indicative of some number of other Republicans. It's just an anecdote.
All-in-all, it was a very pleasant weekend, a nice change of scenery and good to spend some time with Mitzi's daughters and her siblings.
Originally posted at Nice Marmot 15:43 Wednesday, 30 October 2024